Page 338 - grimms-fairy-tales

and screwed their feet fast. ‘I have looked at your fingers,’
said he, ‘and my fancy for card-playing has gone,’ and he
struck them dead and threw them out into the water. But
when he had made away with these two, and was about to
sit down again by his fire, out from every hole and corner
came black cats and black dogs with red-hot chains, and
more and more of them came until he could no longer
move, and they yelled horribly, and got on his fire, pulled
it to pieces, and tried to put it out. He watched them for a
while quietly, but at last when they were going too far, he
seized his cutting-knife, and cried: ‘Away with you, vermin,’
and began to cut them down. Some of them ran away, the
others he killed, and threw out into the fish-pond. When
he came back he fanned the embers of his fire again and
warmed himself. And as he thus sat, his eyes would keep
open no longer, and he felt a desire to sleep. Then he looked
round and saw a great bed in the corner. ‘That is the very
thing for me,’ said he, and got into it. When he was just go-
ing to shut his eyes, however, the bed began to move of its
own accord, and went over the whole of the castle. ‘That’s
right,’ said he, ‘but go faster.’ Then the bed rolled on as if
six horses were harnessed to it, up and down, over thresh-
olds and stairs, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside
down, and lay on him like a mountain. But he threw quilts
and pillows up in the air, got out and said: ‘Now anyone
who likes, may drive,’ and lay down by his fire, and slept till
it was day. In the morning the king came, and when he saw
him lying there on the ground, he thought the evil spirits
had killed him and he was dead. Then said he: ‘After all it is